I’m kind of at my wit’s end with this computer. The performance has been slowly degrading to the point where the machine barely operates.
The details:
The computer is a model I put together myself. It has an 800Mhz AMD chip with 390+MB RAM and a 40GB HD. I’m running Windows XP Pro.
For a while the Task Manager was showing the CPU running at 100% all of the time. Running anything was simply painful.
I bought Norton Anti-Virus hoping to knock out any viruses.
I installed Spybot Search & Destroy and LavaSoft’s Ad-Aware.
I removed a number of Memory-Resident Programs.
The computer now “idles” at about 10% CPU usage. But if I run anything at all beyond Task Manager (even the little program from Verizon that allows me to connect to the internet via my DSL line), the usage ramps back up to 100% again.
At this point, the only items that I (know of) that are running as memory-resident are Norton Anti-Virus, my Palm Pilot’s Hot Sync program, ZoneAlarm (my firewall) and my network connection. And yet, my machine is still slow as heck!
Does anyone have any ideas? I’d be appreciative for any advice!
Are you sure that your computer is seeing all 384 MB? Does the HDD light go on a lot? In the BIOS is the PC set to full speed or ‘Compatible’ (or similar) speed?
Well, the first solution is to uninstall Norton after you’ve scanned for viruses. Norton has a habit of being a system hog, and prohibiting certain tasks regardless of whether or not you’re actively using it.
Then, close down all proceses in the task manager except for the system critical ones. DO NOT Close explorer.exe.
Finally, upgrade your machine. Running XP on anything less than 1 ghz is painful.
The system did work fine for quite a while. It’s only in the last two months or so that it got bad.
It was going bad before I installed Norton. I installed Norton thinking my problem might be caused by a virus. I turned off the Auto-Protect, but that doesn’t seem to have improved the situation any.
As far as I know, the system always recognized all the RAM. I’ve had the machine for at two plus years, but it was only in the last few months that things started going bad.
If anyone else has any further answers, please post them.
I second (third?) the suggestions to uninstall Norton. It slows things down as badly as some of the viruses it is supposed to protect against.
I see you’ve installed Ad-aware and Spybot, but you may also want to run HijackThis and post the log here. It should reveal the presence of any lingering malware.
There are also some steps you can take to make XP perform a little better. Right-click My Computer, hit Properties, go to the Advanced tab, hit the Settings button under Performance, click the Visual Effects tab and select Adjust for best performance. This will conserve resources by turning off some fancy but unnecessary visuals.
Also run the Disk Cleanup wizard (under Start|Programs|Accessories|System Tools). Run CHKDSK on each of your drives (Check Now on the Tools tab in Properties). If any errors are found, run the HD manufacturer’s diagnostic. Try downloading Windows Memory Diagnostic and letting it run for several hours. If it finds any errors then bad RAM is to blame.
Download a free copy of HijackThis, open it in a folder of its own (not on the desktop), run it and select scan. Make no changes at this time, the results are not all bad things! Select ‘Save Log’ and post the results here.
Can you clarify what exactly you mean by “slow”? Purely internet stuff, or local file access too? Any particular apps?
IMO 384mb is barely enough for XP to get out of bed let alone run any apps.
But I agree with the others - de-install apps one but one til you see what’s causing it. NAV is a hot prospect, as is ZA. What does Task Manager show is using the CPu/
Have you defragged? How much free disk space have you?
The guys who write malware are too smart for me. I would try and try, but those weasels keep coming up with something new.
I gave up and bought a spare drive. When one clogs up, I format and load the spare. I have the original to retrieve my data. Run that until the next mystery program clogs things up.
Malware is a kind of dirt. It’s just always there. (Though my problems have gone down since SP2.)
I have run xp pro on a 700mhz system with 256 MB of RAM and it ran fine. You don’t need a super computer to run it. Besides, he’s been running everything fine until 2 months ago, which means that something either went bad hardware wise, or more likely, something was installed to slow it down, be it a virus, or program.
I definitely agree to run hijackthis and post the log here. It’s probably the easiest way for anyone to pick out what’s running that shouldn’t be there.
And just as a long shot, when you ctrl+alt+del do you see a process running that’s called libupdate.exe? If so, I know what your problem is. If not, whew.
I have encountered problems with one of the ZoneAlarm services – vsmon.exe – spiralling up to 100% CPU usage for no apparent reason. I’m not sure if it’s an external attack that activates a flaw in the service, or if the service is just poorly written, but your Task Manager should tell you which service is causing the problems. For what it’s worth, WinXP SP2 has Windows Firewall, which works pretty well and will use fewer system resources than ZoneAlarm.
I also loathe the idea of installing anything authored by Norton, as it tends to think it knows what’s good for me – to the exclusion of any silly ideas my OS or I might have. Norton has only ever caused me pain, and the virus definitions are at least 24 hours behind the curve.
I ran Hijack This last night and saved the log. I also started a defrag but it stopped as I didn’t have enough room on the drive.* I’ll post the log tonight when I get home, as well as clear up some space and run defrag again.
I also recently (in my efforts to try to solve my problems) downloaded and installed XP SP2. Since that has Windows firewall, I can dispense with ZoneAlarm, no?
Again, thank you everyone for your help.
*My drive is a 40GB drive. It’s partitioned into 2 drives of 30 and 10GB each. C: (the larger partition) has 1.75GB free. D: has 8+GB free.
I can’t think of anything beneficial that ZoneAlarm does that Windows firewall doesn’t also do for you. The “Pro” version probably has logging and a few other hardcore features, but for the average user, keeping spyware from phoning home and sealing your ports is all you need. Worse yet, there are apparently corrupted versions of the two ZA processes that are easy for a malicious third party to substitute on your machine; then you think you’re protected but you’re actually running a backdoor for them.
In the interests of fighting ignorance, zev, could you give us the sum of resources used by zlclient.exe and vsmon.exe before you switch over? Also, I don’t have SP2 on this machine – can someone with it installed let us know what the total resource usage for Windows Firewall is?
zev, you should also poke around windows task manager, it tells you a lot more than raw CPU usage. On the Processes tab, you can click on the cpu column header to sort by which processes are using the most CPU. If anything that you don’t recognize is running more than 10%, you should post that for us to comment upon. Also, under the performance tab, there is a PF Usage meter that tells you how hard virtual memory is getting hit. If it spikes when you start a program, then you’ll be in much better shape if you add more RAM to the machine.
when all else fails, backup, reformat and reinstall the system. some will note that this is using a hammer blah blah blah, but it’ll probably save you more time in the end and leave you with a fresh system.
zonealarm allows you to control outgoing network connections, does windows’ firewall do this?
Jurph?
Are you sure Windows Firewall blocks outbound connections effectively?
I’ve been telling my clients to not rely on the Windows Firewall, and infact to turn it off, and stick with Zonealarm. If I have been handing out bad information, I’d appreciate being corrected.
I find that Zone Alarm blocks outgoing traffic far, far better than Windows Firewall. As an experiment I ran one of my computers with ZAP and one solely with Windows Firewall. Windows Firewall let out a ton of stuff without asking permission.
AS for your problem, it’s the lack of free space on your drive. With so little RAM, windows will be trying to swap to the Page File all the time and there’s no room to swap to. Clear a major amount of space from your drive, and you will notice a major difference. Back up and delete at least 10 gig of space to be on the safe side.
No. ZoneAlarm is just about the best free personal firewall there is. However, if you suspect that it’s causing a problem then unplug yourself from the Internet and disable ZA and see how you get on.
Thank you everyone for the input. I really appreciate it. I’m not sure what did it, but I think uninstalling Norton may have done something. I currently have four IE windows open but am running between 35-60% (unheard of before yesterday) : insert happy dance here :
I don’t have a process called zclient.exe running. I do have one called zonealarm.exe. Vsmon is taking about 4-5%, while zonealarm.exe takes about the same percentage.
I’ve been using task manager to try to manage the situation. Whatever program had the focus tended to be the hog. That would mean that vsmon.exe would shoot up when I started my internet connection, iexplorer.exe when I started IE, etc.
I don’t know that I can free up 10GB of space on a 30GB partition, but I will free up some space!
In the interests of fighting ignorance, here is the Hijack This! log that I took last night while the system was still bogged down:
As I’m preparing this post, I still notice spikes when I run Windows (not Internet) Explorer, but I guess I can live with that.